The day of the operation. Then afternoon before the hospital rang and told me I had to be there at 7AM. 7AM! I expressed with surprise. I had been told I was needed there in the afternoon. So I arrived a little before 7 AM, catching the train from Sydenham to Hurstville stations. Amusingly on the train the conductor announced for Wolli Creek, Please change at here for the Airport Line and stops to the rest of the world. My surgery was not scheduled to 11:30 AM, though in the end I went in around 11 AM. Keat arrived after 9 AM and we chatted. Keat is heading off to Beijing. This is great.
I have added this not-to-scale graph. They say that you need to make an informed decision as to what course of action to take, but then provide insufficient information to make that decision. There are two lines here. They are not to scale as I have no way of knowing what the scale is.
- The first line is a curve. It represents the chance of dying from colon cancer if no other action is taken. The chance of death is low at the start and increases as time goes by. Another consideration is that while you may die later, the type of death is a potentially drawn out and painful death with lots of nasty treatments like surgery and chemotherapy.
- With the colonoscopy, it seems the change of colon cancer is reduced to nearly zero as the polyps which are the precursors to the cancer are removed and regular checkups mean that any new polyps are caught before they can turn into cancers. I guess there is a chance the polyp is not found. But there is also a chance of dying in the colonoscopy.
Hence the trade off is from a small chance of dying now agains a larger chance of dying painfully later.
I put on my gown and then went to the bed. The anaesthetist, who had been surprised that I do not look chinese, put me under and I was out to the world until after the procedure. I really do think that they should sell you a DVD of the operation. The good news was that they found no polyps or cancers.
As I was starving, we went to have a chinese lunch of Lamb Soup with Steamed Bread in Hurstville at 新疆拉面馆 and then had a big dinner across the road from my place at the Everest Kitchen. The latter had some of the best food I have had in Sydney and I finished the day felling well fed.
